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How do I find library materials?

Making smart use of the library is one of the most important yet overlooked aspects of working on law review articles. Below are three quick links to get you started in using the library to your advantage.

For any search you are doing, you should begin with the Law Library's home page. There, you will find all the tools you need to make your time with the journals a success, such as guides on searching, links to important databases and easy ways to ask for help.

Once you've mastered searching the library catalog, you can work with your editors and your ILL associates to request items that may not be available on campus. Check out the Interlibrary Loan tab above for more information.

Quick links for top databases

Hein Online: A powerful database of law review articles, scholarly work and primary material, Hein Online is generally accepted as a good cite-checking tool.

Proquest Congressional: A comprehensive collection of Congressional Material going back to the founding of the United States with a wide array of relatively difficult-to-locate documents.

JStor: A large collection of journal articles from a variety of disciplines. Useful for articles that cite outside the usual suspects of legal materials.

Other Library Resources for Journals

The Database list located on the UW Law Library's website collects practically every database that a cite-checker would like to use and many more. Be sure to check with your editor that the e-resource you are using is acceptable. If not, reference librarians are happy to help you locate your cites in print, either in the stacks here or request it from elsewhere.

Other research guides useful for cite-checkers and journal staff include:

The Newspaper Guide: Created by librarians at Memorial Library, this guide will point you to useful resources that include PDFs of newspapers, or even print locations.

Getting items from other libraries: A primer on using the library catalog and requesting items from other campuses and via Interlibrary Loan. Primarily meant for ILL associates, but useful for everyone that uses the library.

The Citation Guide: Hone your Bluebooking skills and learn about other resources to help you correct and create legal citations.